Murrini Maker – First Results

I took it out for a spin last week, loading it up with noodles, stringers, frit, and broken bits and pieces from a pattern bar. I didn’t really have plan when I put these together. Other than stripes or checks, I think it would be really hard to use these to make a specific design or pattern. But I could be wrong. I’d love to hear from someone using this mold.

Lessons Learned

So this is the result of my first attempt. I’ve concluded that this is one of those cases where more isn’t better. Using 3 or 4 colors is better than throwing in a lot of different colors. These bars are pretty small, and the colors get lost if you use too many.

I had also hoped I could use this in my baby kiln, my Evenheat Studio Pro. While the mold fit on the 8″ shelf, it left no room to place kiln posts on the end to dam it. *!*light bulb*!* The idea just occurred to me that I might be able to take a long strip of fiber paper and wrap it all the way around the mold securing it with a straight pin. hmm… I’ll have to give that some more thought.

In any case, this is a fun mold, and I’m looking forward to doing some more experimenting with it.

I made a tile with liquid stringer design then cut out the pieces with my ring saw and fire polished for this mirror. I will prob do something similar with the murrini if I ever get off of my fat butt today and start working. I have a bunch of pattern bars to cut and finally broke down and bought a new diamond blade for my big saw–$65.

Love it! I haven’t tried the liquid stringer yet. On my list of things to try some day. Got to have that diamond blade. I wish I had better saw. Even with the diamond blade, I can’t get the nice cuts I want.

Hi I tried three. I didn’t spend too much time thinking about the design on any of them. You can read my comment on my flickr page. I wasn’t that impressed with this thing. It’s hard to fill up so they don’t over flow. But I think I do like the thin channels. Those little ones would do great in a mosaic, I’d have to make quite a lot though for one piece.

I did the liquid stringer in a class. Have I done it at home yet? NO. Fusing glass doesn’t really thrill me. I’m not into making another bowl or what not like you see whenever you go out. I do like to make components for my mosaics in the kiln. And fool around with just melting things together like tempered glass or bottle scraps. haha I bought a ton of dichroic scraps from a jewelry artist. Those photos are on my flickr somewhere. He hand makes all his dichroic so they were all about 1/4 thick and so I cut out shapes with my ring saw. LOts of hearts and eyes and some matisse shapes.

I am pretty sure I followed these instructions on the D&L Art Glass website.

To use the murrini mold: prime the mold and use any compatible glass – noodles and stringer, strips, frit, whatever you like, to fill. Do not ramp up faster than 300 degrees F/hour to avoid breaking the mold. Do not exceed temperature of 1,465-75 degrees F for System 96 and 1,500 degrees F for FX90. Use a minimal hold time then follow the annealing ramp for 1/4” thickness